Congressman Patrick Murphy of Florida has long been considered by national Democrats as the party’s best chance to snatch Republican Marco Rubio’s seat. The young, attractive, establishment-friendly House member (from a wealthy family, no less) looked like a much surer and smarter bet when Barack Obama endorsed him last year over the brash, obnoxious true progressive, fellow congressman Alan Grayson.
But a blockbuster report from Miami’s CBS affiliate about how Murphy has misrepresented his pre-political career—published the same day Rubio decided to run for reelection after all—shows the Senate hopeful may not be the golden candidate Democrats thought.
Here’s the scoop from CBS Miami:
The station’s thorough investigation discovered that while Murphy has claimed in campaign ads to have worked as a CPA, he was never licensed as one in the state of Florida:
But Murphy’s made more than just one little résumé enhancement. The station also discovered that the “small business” he purported to have begun from the ground up—an oil-skimming contractor created to help clean up in the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill—was actually a division of Murphy’s father’s large South Florida construction company. And the company never actually received a contract to clean up oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, it purchased another company that actually performed the work, started by a local from Louisiana:
The entire report is worth reading, from the accounts of Murphy’s campaign stonewalling CBS Miami to the revelation that Murphy’s former company has spent more money storing its four skimming boats for the past five years than it made in the immediate aftermath of the oil spill.
According to the average of the few polls of the Democratic primary, Murphy leads Grayson by nine percentage points. The Senate primary for both parties is August 30. The filing deadline for any other candidates is Friday, June 24.
